Working With Oracle Data Guard Protection Groups

Unlike other data replication mechanisms, such as the Availability Suite feature of
Oracle Solaris, Oracle Data Guard is an integral part of Oracle database software.
Consequently, you do not place Oracle database-server resource groups under Geographic Edition
control as you do when you are using one of these host or
storage-based data replication mechanisms.

You can add Oracle Data Guard Broker configurations for databases that are
being replicated by Oracle Data Guard to Geographic Edition without stopping the databases.

You must set the Oracle Data Guard Broker property BystandersFollowRoleChange to NONE
as soon as the broker configuration is created and preferably before the broker
is added to the Geographic Edition configuration.

Overview of Administering Protection Groups

To add an existing Oracle Data Guard Broker configuration that contains an
Oracle Data Guard replicated database to a new protection group, you will complete
the following general procedures.

How to Administer an Oracle Data Guard Protection Group (Example)

Note - The following example shows all the steps that are involved in administering Oracle
Data Guard protection groups, as described in more detail in procedures that are
included later in this chapter.

Ensure that the Oracle Data Guard Broker properties BystandersFollowRoleChange and FAST_START FAILOVER are set
properly.

Caution - To ensure security, do not supply a password when you specify the sysdba_password
property. If you specify only -p sysdba_password=, the geopg command prompts you to type an
actual password, which is not displayed as you type it. You can pipe
the password to the command if you want to drive the geopg
command from another shell script.

For ease of management and greater security, configure an Oracle wallet to manage
public key security credentials on Oracle clients and servers. If you use an
Oracle wallet, specify only -p sysdba_username= and the Geographic Edition Data Guard module will use
the /@local_service_name or /@remote_service_name connect string syntax. For more information, see Using Oracle Wallet Manager in
Oracle Database Advanced Security Administrator's Guide.

Also, to run the following command successfully, you must already be able to
connect to both a local and a remote database service.

phys-paris-1# geopg start -e local sales-pg
Processing operation... The timeout period for this operation on
each cluster is 3600 seconds (3600000 milliseconds)...
Protection group "sales-pg" successfully started.

If your mysales.com Oracle Data Guard Broker configuration is not already enabled, this
process might take a few minutes or more. The actual time that the
process takes depends on the configuration of your primary and standby databases as
well as the distance between the clusters.

Adding the shadow Oracle database-server resource group to the protection group is
not critical to the operation of the replication. The resource contained within it
simply reflects the status of the real Oracle database-server resource group and highlights
whether the cluster is the Oracle Data Guard primary cluster.

From any node in a partner cluster, globally activate the protection group on
both clusters.